[Peace] HuffPo: Celebrities & Experts Push Congress To End Trump’s Support For Saudi Carnage In Yemen

Tue Oct 10 01:25:27 UTC 2017

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/yemen-war-saudi-coalition-us-support_us_
59dbde4be4b0b34afa5b8c62

Celebrities And Experts Push Congress To End Trump’s Support For Saudi
Carnage In Yemen
With a House vote this week, a diverse group — including Mark Ruffalo,
Alice Walker, Laurence Tribe and FreedomWorks — is getting involved.

By Akbar Shahid Ahmed

WASHINGTON ― The lawmakers behind a major bipartisan effort to end U.S.
assistance for a devastating Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen are
getting help from big names in multiple arenas as they try to whip votes.

Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and
Walter Jones (R-N.C.) want an up-or-down House vote before the end of the
week on a resolution to end American support for the Saudi-led coalition. A
letter dated Oct. 9 and provided exclusively to HuffPost shows strong
backing for their initiative from across the political spectrum and the
national conversation: Foreign policy commentators like Noam Chomsky and
Stephen Walt signed the letter, and so did actors Mark Ruffalo, Brie Larson
and Martin Sheen, author Alice Walker, playwright Eve Ensler, prominent
legal scholars like Harvard’s Laurence Tribe and Yale’s Bruce Ackerman, the
tea party-linked group FreedomWorks
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tea-party-aligned-group-helping-push-congress-to-debate-us-role-in-yemen-war_us_59d7cf6de4b0f6eed3502f3d?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004>,
former officials under Democratic and Republican presidents, and former
members of Congress from both parties.

“By invoking provisions of U.S. law allowing for the introduction of a
privileged resolution to withdraw unauthorized U.S. forces from this
conflict, you are reasserting the rightful role of Congress,” reads the
letter, formally addressed to the four congressmen. “We, the undersigned,
encourage all U.S. Representatives to vote yes to this resolution. This
measure strengthens U.S. governance to comport better with the
Constitution, assists in reducing a genuine threat to national security
posed by the expansion of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and promises
to assist in ending the senseless suffering of millions of innocent people
in Yemen.”

The Saudi-led coalition began fighting pro-Iran rebels in Yemen, the Middle
East’s poorest country, on behalf of the Yemeni government in March 2015.
It received U.S. help
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-saudi-aggression_us_571a9922e4b0d0042da94fc2>
from
the start. Currently, aerial refueling provided by American aircraft
enables bombing runs by the planes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/uae-yemen-growing-scrutiny_us_59ce9b1ae4b05f005d34396c?x5e>
(UAE),
while the U.S. government provides the coalition with intelligence and
fresh stocks of weapons.

But Congress has never authorized this military adventure or identified the
Iran-backed rebel militia, the Houthis, as a threat to the United States.

President Barack Obama originally approved U.S. support for Saudi Arabia,
the UAE and other U.S.-aligned governments in the coalition. Obama
administration officials have since explained he did it to reassure those
countries that Washington’s support for them remained steadfast even after
the U.S. reached a nuclear deal with Iran.

That logic, however, never satisfied constitutionalists and anti-war
activists who saw the U.S. support as militaristic executive overreach.
It’s become less and less popular as the Saudi-led coalition has been
accused of committing major war crimes in Yemen, which might implicate
American officials
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-yemen/exclusive-as-saudis-bombed-yemen-u-s-worried-about-legal-blowback-idUSKCN12A0BQ>,
and of creating a humanitarian crisis
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/23/world/middleeast/yemen-cholera-humanitarian-crisis.html?_r=0>
with
its naval blockade and bombing of key infrastructure in that country.

The letter points to U.S. culpability in the suffering of Yemen’s people.

It also highlights a major conundrum for U.S. foreign policy makers. While
executive branch officials have justified many recent military
interventions, including counterterror operations focused on Yemen, on the
basis of a broad authorization for the use of military force against al
Qaeda and its associates that Congress approved in 2001, support for the
Saudi-led coalition is largely unrelated to the fight against al Qaeda, the
Islamic State and other Islamic extremist groups. In fact, according to the
U.S. State Department, the Yemen intervention has created a situation
that’s benefiting the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda.

The proposed House resolution would end U.S. support for the coalition’s
operations against the Houthi rebels within 30 days. It’s written to appeal
widely. It frames the question as one of American constitutional authority,
avoiding messy debates about international laws of war and specifically
preserving U.S. operations in Yemen that are narrowly focused on al Qaeda
and similar threats.

The resolution would be the most sweeping congressional action on the war
yet. Previous efforts in both houses have targeted U.S. arms shipments to
Saudi Arabia rather than the overall strategy of U.S. support for the
campaign. Since 2015, lawmakers skeptical about the war have scheduled
House and Senate votes aimed at those weapons sales. None of those measures
passed, but they signaled how widely shared dislike of the war has become
on Capitol Hill, with 204 House members supporting an effort to stop
transfers of cluster munitions last year and 47 senators, including almost
all Democrats, trying to block
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-approves-first-portion-of-trumps-saudi-weapons-deal_us_59395477e4b0061054802abb?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000016&section=politics>
the
sale of precision-guided bombs this summer.

Fans of those measures often spoke of them as efforts to pressure Saudi
Arabia and the UAE to be more careful in how they waged the war and to move
more quickly to negotiate an end to it.

In recent weeks, congressional staffers and human rights advocates have
begun to focus more on American responsibility for Yemen’s pain and the
possibility of ending U.S. support
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-us-saudi-yemen-war_us_59b9b4eae4b0edff971920fb>
 altogether.

The logic behind the new House effort
<https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/81/text?r=3>,
backed
by more than a dozen legal experts who signed the Oct. 9 letter, is that
the War Powers Resolution of 1973
<http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/warpower.asp> compels lawmakers to
act because the ongoing American refueling and targeting assistance to the
Saudi coalition constitute the introduction of unauthorized U.S. forces
into hostilities ― and because there’s a clear threat the executive will
approve such use of U.S. forces again.

Congressional aides and activists trying to win support for the House
resolution are concerned that GOP leadership may try to quash it. But the
public approval of influential figures on the right and left, from former
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a libertarian hero, to anti-war activist Phyllis
Bennis, is giving them more confidence as they prepare for a vote on
Thursday or Friday.

“My three colleagues and I are grateful for this strong endorsement of
H.Con.Res 81 from some of our country’s leading authorities in law,
national security, and foreign affairs, as well as renowned creative
artists and grassroots leaders from across the political spectrum,” Khanna
told HuffPost. “As millions of Yemenis suffer from unimaginable and
avoidable hunger as a result of this unauthorized U.S.-Saudi war, our bill
is the first step to fulfilling Congress’s constitutional mandate to stop
this war.  We are channeling the aspirations of millions of ordinary
Americans — left, right, and center — who seek a foreign policy of
restraint and non-intervention.”

*Read the letter below:*

===

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1 <(202)%20448-2898>

Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen
https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580
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